For More Than 100 Years, Horan's Has Helped Customers Say It With Flowers

Here's some expert advice.

Here's some expert advice.

MARA LEE maralee@courant.comThe Hartford Courant

SIMSBURY — More than 30 years ago, Tom Horan had a customer who came into Horan's Flowers every week to buy a single rose to take home to his wife.

Horan would wrap that rose in cellophane, put a bow on it, week after week, year after year.

One day, the man said to him, "Tom, you make it so nice looking. It's only a single rose. Why bother?"

Horan replied, "You're one of my best customers."

For Horan Florist, a business that will see its 105th anniversary later this year, it's all about the thoughtful touches.

Instead of using marbles or pebbles for balloon weights in a flower arrangement, they use bags of candy.

They write down every flower in an arrangement — a habit that's been a lifesaver when someone sees the arrangement with their name on it at a funeral home, and calls in later angrily, saying, "That's not what I ordered." More than once, he said,another mourner switched the cards to take credit for the nicer arrangement from Horan's.

After 45 years running a retail business, he's still able to smile and shrug when describing that kind of behavior.

"People are funny," Horan says with a chuckle.

He took over the business when it was located on South Whitney Avenue in Hartford in 1968 after his father died of a heart attack. He was the youngest of five children, and all the others were established in their careers and didn't want to take over the business founded by their grandfather.

"Mary Margaret and I had just gotten married," just about a month before, Horan remembers. From 1968 to 1969, they bought the business, bought a house in Simsbury, and had a baby.

He opened a second shop, in Simsbury, in 1976, and closed the Hartford location in 1992, after a few years of stagnant sales there and three break-ins within two years.

In his Simsbury shop, starting Tuesday or Wednesday, Horan will be working 9 a.m. to midnight, getting ready for Valentine's Day, the biggest sales week of the year for florists. Last year, he sold 2,500 roses and about 200 to 300 flower bouquets that weren't roses.

A dozen roses on Valentine's Day will cost $70, $20 more than the rest of the year, but it doesn't matter; that's what they want. Horan said a ton of surveys have showed women's favorite colors in roses are yellow or peach, but that doesn't matter this week.

"Red, the guys, they got to have red," he said.

About half the bouquets on Friday will be delivered, and half will be picked up. "I've had times when it's lines out the door," Horan said.

He remembered one time a man was in line near closing on Valentine's Day, without having ordered in advance. The man spied a bouquet of roses Horan describes as "blown open" in the cooler. That means the buds are fully open — it's a dramatic look, but it means the bouquet doesn't have much more time before petals start dropping.

"Oh, I can't sell you that," Horan said an employee told the man. "Will it last through dinner?" the man asked. He was assured that it would. He replied, "I'll take it!"

They sold it to him at half-price.

On Valentine's Day, a half-dozen friends Horan has had since elementary school will drive around the Farmington Valley, delivering bouquets. "They won't take money, not even for gas," Horan says.

His eight employees will be bustling, and a recent retiree, who worked for him for 25 years, will pitch in, too.

Even though Horan sold out of roses a couple of days before Valentine's Day last year, and had to order more last minute, he didn't order any more roses this year. He's cautious, with a perishable product.

"One year it was a disaster," he said. There was heavy snow right around Valentine's Day. "I was stuck with 500 or 600 roses. I donated them to the McLean [nursing] home."

Courtney Febbroriello, co-owner of Simsbury's Metro Bis, said she's worked with Horan's for more than 15 years, with flower arrangements for bridal showers, rehearsal dinners, baby showers and funeral receptions held at the restaurant, as well as a single rose for diners who are celebrating a birthday or an anniversary.

She remembered one bride who wanted green orchids for her rehearsal dinner.

"He got her green orchids," Febbroriello said. "He's really great with that kind of thing, whatever you can dream of, he can come up with, it's always beautiful."

She said some of the arrangements at the restaurant have included asparagus or lemons.

"I think it's so remarkable to see a business that has been around so long that's family owned, that's local, that just has that level of excellence."

Horan has been in business long enough to see other local florists close, in the 1970s, in the late '80s, even shops with decades of history.

At the business's peak, in the 1990s, he did a little more than $500,000 in annual sales, and had 12 employees. During the Great Recession — Horan calls it a depression — sales fell to the low to mid $300,000s, and there were times he couldn't pay himself.

It was like the rug was pulled out from under him, he said. "It was amazing. A dramatic difference."

But demand began recovering in the past 18 months, and sales increased about 4 percent from 2012 to 2013, when sales were about $400,000.

Grocery stores and the Internet are both competitors. He said companies that do direct sales of bouquets over 800-numbers or the Internet try to lowball him when they ask his staff to design and deliver an arrangement.

Still, Horan is not nostalgic for the days when his father grew most of the flowers in the greenhouses in the back. Now, he can get tulips and daffodils almost any time, compared with years ago, when they were only available for a month or so. There are so many new colors in carnations, roses and Gerber daisies, Horan's favorite flower. ("They're just like a happy flower.")

At 71, Horan is starting to think about retirement. None of his three sons will take over Horan's — the two bankers make far more than he ever did — and while his oldest grandson is 17, it doesn't seem likely there will be a fourth generation of Horans running the shop in a few years.

Instead, he said, "We'll put it on the market and see what happens. Somebody might come along and make me an offer I can't refuse."

Horan's Flowers and Gifts is open 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and 8:30 to 2 p.m. on Saturdays. 926 Hopmeadow St, Simsbury, 860-651-8554.